I Love My Job

Oh how I love my job.  Truly, I do.  I told you earlier, if you were paying attention, I work in a theatre.  It is the best job I have ever had.  I get to watch amazing shows (almost every week), meet famous people (read famous as starred in soaps over 10 years ago) and generally have fun.

Another part of the job that is so much fun is the public.  Now, don’t get me wrong, they can be a total, utter pain in the arse, but sometimes there are little gems.  Like today for instance, there was a children’s play on today called Room on the Broom (not important, I’m not going to tell you anything about it, other than the last song is so catchy.  I even tried finding it on iTunes.)  Anyway, I was working in the bar on the highest level of the theatre and a mother/son combo arrived at the top of the stairs for Robbie (son’s name) to get extremely excited and run to the seating area to see the stage and the fun dragon prancing about on stage.  Mother, at this point (who will remain Mother with a capital M because she was horrible) roars at him about not running off and that he must give the girl the tickets.  Robbie does this like a good little boy, then, after being told where to go decides to tear off in front of his mother to get to the seats.  The excitement is too much for him as you can probably imagine.  What does Mother do?  Shouts at him again.  Give the boy a break, it’s 9.30 on a Saturday morning.  He’s probably been up for at least 4 hours.  It was Mother’s choice to come to the theatre, I doubt very much little Robbie was perusing the newspaper one day and thought, “Oh Mother, how I would love to go to the theatre, there seems to be a spiffy play on at the Royal next week by the creators of the Gruffalo. Can we go Mother? Can we?” (although, I would love it if he had done that.)  So Mother comes in, gets a coffee, looking mildly distressed by the whole affair of having to climb a hundred stairs with a hyperactive child en route to the nose bleed seats and I can see in her eyes that if Robbie says one more word she will literally pick him up and throw him over the edge of the balcony, resulting in most definite death and also the probably that of several other children below as his ragdoll body thunks on top of their heads most likely breaking their necks resulting in their death too.  To cut a long story short, Mother did not do this, they both left happily(ish) and I’m assuming made it home safe.

The Vagina Monologues was another gem of a show to come.  Bringing with it a very specific niche market of middle-aged, generally drunk women who find it hysterically funny to listen to Anita Dobson talk about her “cludge-bucket” (or as I like to call it, the gaping abyss.)  Now, most shows have a late-comers policy.  You can’t let the late patrons in until a suitable point in the show for several people to be a total nuisance and ruin the enjoyment of the show for everybody else for 10-15 seconds.  So, one evening this late-comers policy was put into action with myself helping keep the patrons at bay.  I had a charming group of older ladies, a few of which had the beautiful aroma of beer and cigarettes mixed together (I think they call it ‘eau de boke’.)  While chatting away to try to keep their mind of the fact they were missing ten minutes of the show one of the group kept butting in with the fact they were only two minutes late, they need to see it blah, blah, blah, for me to reply with company policy blah, blah, blah.  Then came my favourite quote from any patron, “Oh, come on son, you must be able to get us in.  You look just like Harry Potter.”  Well yes Mrs Patron I do, however, unlike Harry Potter (the fictional character) I do not possess the power of magic.  Neither do I have a cloak of invisibility in which I could cover us all and get you to your seats without anyone noticing (which I might add were in the front row.)  This woman was clearly either insane or so drunk the lines of reality and fiction were totally blurring together.  This, in my mind, was not a good state to go into an auditorium and listen to three women constantly talking about their vaginas. 

Anyway, I must try to sleep as I have to be up in 5 hours so I can go to work in the morning and do the whole children’s play again.  Hopefully some beauties will pop up and I can inform you again.  I bet you are on the edge of your seats waiting.  Well, not long to wait.  Enjoy.